Given the macabre subject matter (accompanied by a heavy-metal soundtrack), I knew I would be less enthused about watching this Bava effort. Still, the opening is not too bad, with even an effective empty coach ride shot in slow-motion and set against a misty backdrop that actually evokes the director's father's BLACK Sunday (1960; which Lamberto would himself remake 30 years later!). However, the teen protagonists of the film under review do not exactly set the screen on fire: after robbing a grocery store just for kicks, they head for a weekend of mindless fun but lose their way and end up smack in the middle of a cemetery! After abandoning the van in a river, they have to continue on foot – occasionally, a shady figure that is clearly observing them makes itself felt.
Anyway, they find a spot where to spend the night but one of the kids decides he cannot sleep in such a morbid atmosphere and, wandering about, stumbles on an inn! He wakes his pals and they go in, where the one-eyed and incessantly cackling bartender proves to be the same man we had seen spying the group. After they unwisely attempt a wise-cracking approach a' la AN American WEREWOLF IN London (1981; which they even refer to!), the teenagers notice a pot full of money and, asking about it, are told that those are the as-yet-uncollected funds of a wager coming to anybody making it though the night spent in the maze of catacombs underneath the inn. More out of sheer greed than a sense of adventure, the group accept to undertake this proposition.
From here on in, the tone is necessarily claustrophobic, heavy-handed (involving some flat EVIL DEAD-style attempts at gallows humor) and repetitive (since the characters often find themselves in a room already 'visited'). In the end, when the time is almost up (and after having encountered a variety of ghouls), one girl suggests that they follow their instincts rather than logic. The latter makes for a nice surreal touch but it arrives too late to save the film – especially when it transpires to not even have the courage of its convictions (interestingly, albeit unoriginally, the plot seems to be leading to a revelation in which the whole journey proves to be an acceptance of their own death by the protagonists – since we are shown their van being unaccountably found overturned by the Police – but, when the group finally emerge from the inn with their pockets filled with the bounty they had just won, these are taken by the oblivious law enforcers as merely additional loot, to the initial and long-forgotten petty crime, they will need to account for! Ultimately, for a much more artistically valid look at "A Night At The Cemetery" (the film's original Italian title), I would recommend Jean Rollin's THE IRON ROSE (1973)...
